The present specification generally relates to electronic commerce and order processing.
The use of the internet to promote and sell products has proliferated in recent years to the point where it has become a significant portion of retail sales. While considerable focus by prominent online retailers has been placed on optimizing the sales process for retail customers, less innovation has occurred in business-to-business (B2B) sales. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,960,411 to Hartman (U.S. '411), an approach is described that provides single-action ordering to customers independent of the shopping cart ordering component. The single-action ordering method in U.S. '411 displays the minimal amount of purchaser-specific order information sufficient to indicate to the purchaser whether the correct information is being used (e.g., which credit card is being used) to immediately place the order without having to go through the checkout process.
However, the single-action functionality in U.S. '411 requires the user to set up a preferred account in advance so that account can automatically be retrieved for single-action ordering from the item page, and does not give the user flexibility to select from a list of options which form of payment the customer would prefer to use, even in an expedited sales funnel, which is disadvantageous for a purchaser employed by a business to purchase various different products for different internal groups, and thus may be required to use different forms of payment or accounts depending on the which group the products are being purchased for. Additionally, among other deficiencies, existing solutions such as U.S. '411 are unable to dynamically assess at purchase time on an e-commerce platform the size, type, and/or credit-worthiness of a business, and/or the nature of products being ordered, to selectively determine the payment options to offer business.
What has long since been needed is an B2B e-commerce platform that provides a reduced ordering process that eliminates unnecessary steps while fulfilling the payment requirements of business customers.